for art's sake – the art of listening to music including hi-res audio, MQA, DSD and 5.1 surround sound

Tag Archives: Acoustic Roots

Even though this was my first recorded album done in ’95 and released in ’96 I never released it to iTunes and the rest for digital downloads. I don’t know why…maybe their compressed MP3 sound was too off the original.

It was a coffeehouse acoustic album, I made it in a spare bedroom and did all the recording and mixing. it was mastered by Gus “Guinness” Skinas. I included 2 cover songs by Townes Van Zandt who was still living then, out of respect for his respect for songwriting.

Now these years later, I made this roots acoustic collection featuring Calvin McElroy (guitars, mandolin), John Caulfield (fiddle) and Roger Powell (guitars) on some tracks available for streaming on TIDAL and 7Digital as an MQA encoded CD Master.

The Anytime Offer…

It’s independence reminder time and that works for me. Keeping moving and creating things and paying attention to art around me which includes in a big way nature in general.

I’ve worked in the past year or so reassembling the earliest recordings I had from when I started working with digital audio in a home studio situation in 1994 and 95. Before those years I had recorded to multitrack 1/4″ and even 4-track cassette and other things off and on.

In 1994/95 working at home more in a studio setup with real mics, real recording gear, a mixer, yada yada was new for me at the time. My ears were wide open!

Now I’ve released these as MQA encoded masters. The 16 tracks on “Independent Acoustic Roots“ don’t appear anywhere else. Some of the same songs and takes do in fact appear on my first CD release “Lost in the Green”. But those final CD tracks had been overdubbed with other parts in many cases and remixed in all cases. Again there are numerous songs on this release that don’t even appear on the first CD.

These independence tracks are just what I recorded and how I mixed it originally. It’s as stark and sparse as it gets. If you don’t like stark and sparse, you won’t like this. You don’t need any special player or equipment or software to hear the MQA master. It’s regular CD quality 16/44.1.

In listening to these early recordings and mixes I had made, I realized I have not come as far as I sometimes like to think I have :)

These recordings were and are all about a singer-songwriter with a guitar and a few mics (usually 2 on the guitar and 1 vocal) playing his original songs in a makeshift bedroom studio. That’s still what I do a lot, often with only 1 mic!

But these songs were all carefully played and recorded (16/48 Tascam DA-88). I then mixed them to stereo carefully on a then pretty new Mackie 1202 that I still often use live. So it’s as basic as it gets and the essence of my acoustic independence seems wrapped in that.

I didn’t have anyone telling me what to play, how to play it, who to sound like, what was popular (coffeehouse hadn’t even come back yet in the mainstream), or even when to play.

I still don’t have those requirements today and am still thankful for that. Sharing these early tracks is something I’m happy to do because to me they sound pure acoustic and that is still something I like a lot, wherever it’s coming from.

So I hope you get to hear some of the acoustic roots cellar material I’ve put out now from then. It is still the way I write and sing as far as I know.

As always thanks for listening and enjoy your 4th and your independence.

Aloha to All,

– DE

OOPS! BACK TO THE OFFER… With no time limit (one per person), if you get the“Independent Acoustic Roots“download here, I will give you a free redeem code for any of the other titles I have online here on Bandcamp. A lot of these are MQA encoded as well and have the logo. Many are hi-res and unfold to 24/352.8 with the proper MQA DAC.

I’ll get your email address from the “Independent Acoustic” Bandcamp download and then contact you to find out what other album you’d like, or feel free to just email me with your request.

Also remember that Bandcamp downloads allow you to grab any and all formats they offer anytime after purchase. They also then provide unlimited streaming of songs for that title.

Be sure to download any lossless format which includes: WAV, FLAC, AIF, ALAC. Whatever you are used to using, they are all encoded as MQA. Avoid MP3 and AAC however as they are lossy and lose the MQA encoding.